On Jan. 15, 2006, Michelle Bachelet (see Biographies), the candidate of the ruling centre-left Concertación coalition, was elected the first woman president of Chile. Her victory over Sebastián Piñera, who represented the right-wing coalition Alliance for Chile, was clear-cut, as she took 53.5% of the vote to Piñera’s 46.5%. Bachelet’s win brought to power a fourth Concertación government, a historic level of political continuity for the country. Her victory also put to rest the belief that the Concertación coalition had lost its raison d’être and signaled the renewal of the coalition’s political agenda after its original purpose of restoring Chile to a full democracy had been achieved. (In August 2005 Pres. Ricardo Lagos’s administration oversaw approval of a series of political reforms that eliminated virtually all of the undemocratic features of Chile’s 1980 constitution.)

During the campaign to succeed Lagos, Bachelet (who was, like her predecessor, a Socialist Party member) promised that, if elected, she would be a different kind of president and would make greater grassroots participation in politics and the amelioration of stubborn socioeconomic disparities hallmarks of her presidency. Once in office, she focused on achieving her campaign agenda, “36 Immediate Measures,” which dealt largely with social-policy deficiencies. One of Bachelet’s first actions as president was to extend free medical attention in public hospitals to the elderly poor. She also increased the pensions of the poorest Chileans by 10% and named high-level commissions to conduct an overall evaluation of the current pension and health care systems and to recommend reforms.

Bachelet was equally active on human rights issues. In the first months after taking office, she met with the families of Chileans who had been “disappeared” during the military rule under former president Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and she declared August 30 a National Day of the Detained and Disappeared. News of Pinochet’s death in Santiago on December 10 prompted thousands of demonstrators to pour into the streets of the capital city in celebration. The government rejected a state funeral for Pinochet, who died without ever having stood trial for human rights abuses that occurred while he was in power.

On the economic front, Bachelet inherited a strong economy from Lagos. The high demand for copper, Chile’s largest export earner, brought record-high prices and higher-than-expected revenues to Chile’s coffers, which helped to fund social programs as well as a new program to give incentives for technological innovation. At the same time, the copper boom resulted in the devaluation of the U.S. dollar vis-à-vis the Chilean peso, which hurt other export areas, notably fruits and wine, and made those goods more expensive on the international market. The Bachelet government also continued Chile’s free-trade policies, especially those oriented toward Asia. The government in 2006 concluded negotiations on a historic free-trade agreement (FTA) with China, signed a trade agreement with India, and progressed in its FTA negotiations with Japan. The Chilean economy was expected to grow by close to 5% in 2006, while the country maintained a positive balance of trade and a low rate of inflation.

Bachelet faced domestic challenges, especially in dealing with pent-up social demands. Just three months after taking office, the new president encountered her first real crisis when tens of thousands of public-school students skipped school to protest poor conditions. Joining nationwide demonstrations, high-school students in Valparaíso take to the streets on May 30 to protest proposed changes in Chile’s public education system.Eliseo Fernandez—Reuters /LandovThe crisis was resolved when the government allocated additional moneys to education, including financial assistance to the poorest students, and set up a special committee to recommend changes to the educational system. The government also confronted labour strikes by copper miners and health workers.